Faithful on Fridays Blog

Part Two

Traditions, everyone practices them whether it’s at home during the holidays, at Church each Sunday, or even personally in everyday life; the Pharisees were no different. When tradition becomes more important than the reason you practice them there’s a problem. For example, Pharisees believed the written Word of God was divinely inspired, however, in time commentaries held equal authority: that’s another problem. Eventually, since commentaries were written by man, there arose hostility between authors and arguments about who’s right; sound familiar?

Today, Bible commentaries are freely available online and often personal perspectives of Scripture receive equal authority to the Bible itself. You may not admit it, but it’s true, nevertheless. Have we become more dependent on what others think than what the Holy Spirit is personally revealing to us? Before opening a commentary, open the Bible with a prayer asking for His divine inspiration … then, if you’re still unsure, read that commentary remembering it’s the perspective of the author. Don’t be a Pharisee.

These religious leaders practiced frequent fasting but Jesus revealed this self-denial was for the wrong reason. He used a lower story parable of an ‘old garment or wineskin’ of tradition (Mark 2) that would be destroyed since the old wouldn’t tolerate the new. The upper story was that Jesus cautioned us to practice our traditions for the right reason: His glory.

Compulsive washings, hands and vessels, were believed to create holiness, when in reality, Jesus was looking for holy hearts.

And so you cancel the word of God for the sake of your own tradition. Matthew 15:6b

Despite their arguments with the Sadducees (another religious group) about the resurrection of the dead, rewards and punishments in the afterlife, they only joined forces in opposition to Jesus. Righteousness, in their opinion, was achieved by keeping the Law, conversely, Jesus taught it was about a new, spiritual birth of sinners. I wonder how often we slip into similar thinking; it’s about going to church, reading our Bibles, or not getting drunk, when in reality, it’s about our reason for doing those good things. We can easily get a Pharisee-viewpoint if we’re not careful.

Lastly, the Sabbath was the pinnacle in their narrow and legalistic perspectives. There were numerous rules to follow and punishments for loosening even one of them but, again, Jesus nailed it. One Sabbath they caught His disciples picking grain but Jesus countered it with King David’s same experience (Luke 6). He knew their thoughts and hard hearts (Mark 3) when He healed a man on the Sabbath and authoritatively declared Himself Lord of the Sabbath. Yikes; He was already setting Himself up for Good Friday.

Jesus, then and now, cares about the ‘why’ in our thoughts, words, and actions. It’ll help you to analyze your own hearts by asking Him to transform any traditions you hold for the wrong reason to come back into alignment again. Don’t let any tradition, including church’s (the outside) to cancel God’s Word in your heart (the inside).